A Research On Relationship Between Strategic Flexibility And Business Performance

With the continuous advance of globalization and the rapid development of S&T, environmentfaced by firms is increasingly complex and dynamic. In order to achieve the better performance thancompetitors, it’s the trend of survival and development for enterprises to find a mode of strategicflexibility which is highly flexible to adapt to market changes, able to guide the market demand andable to respond quickly. As one of emerging strategic industries in China, IT industry mattersindustrial revitalization and restructure. How to deal with opportunities and challenges in a dynamicenvironment has become a key issue of decision-making practice in IT firms’ strategic management.From the theory views of strategic flexibility and operational performance, the thesis defines theconnotation of strategic flexibility. The factors of strategic flexibility are also analyzed from resourceflexibility, capacity flexibility and organizational flexibility, as well as specifically analyzing theinherent relation between strategic flexibility and performance. Based on basic theoretical analysis,the theory model and related research assumptions are constructed of the relation between strategicflexibility and operational performance. Secondly, the thesis selects IT enterprises listed companies asthe research objectives and empirically analyzes the relation between strategic flexibility andoperational performance. Finally, some constructive comments are provided to build enterprises’strategic flexibility and improve their orerational performance.The results show that resource flexibility and operating performance are U shaped-related,capacity flexibility and operating performance are inverted U shaped-related and organizationalflexibility and performance are positive linear-related. Besides, the organizational flexibility hassignificant positive effect to the relation between capacity flexibility and performance. It’s also foundthat strategic flexibility impacts business performance, but the role and the role path of eachdimension impacting the financial and market performance is different. To choose the right strategicflexibility level and promote the short-term and long-term performance, which can enhance the corecompetitiveness ultimately, IT enterprises can nurture the moderate resource flexibility based on thedynamic environment, build the moderate capacity flexibility based on the organizational flexibility,improve the organizational flexibility based on clear positioning and prompt the mutualtransformation between resource flexibility and capacity flexibility based on the market demand.